We rarely accelerate/decelerate to the limit of the car, and therefore should choose.
If just a few percent of drivers did as I suggest, stop and go disappears. In effect slowing in advance moves the congestion back earlier, reduces its size, and makes it easy to have it evaporate.
The reason that traffic jams happen is that freely moving traffic carries more cars per minute than stop and go. So there is a traffic volume where there are two states - everyone moving or traffic jam. But when everyone is moving, even minor slowdowns can cascade and switch states. And once switched, it is impossible to fix until traffic volume dies down and the hard stops are eliminated.
We can't easily fix traffic volume. But the strategy that I suggest eliminates hard stops without reducing cars per minute. And therefore causes the jams to go away faster.
If just a few percent of drivers did as I suggest, stop and go disappears. In effect slowing in advance moves the congestion back earlier, reduces its size, and makes it easy to have it evaporate.
The reason that traffic jams happen is that freely moving traffic carries more cars per minute than stop and go. So there is a traffic volume where there are two states - everyone moving or traffic jam. But when everyone is moving, even minor slowdowns can cascade and switch states. And once switched, it is impossible to fix until traffic volume dies down and the hard stops are eliminated.
We can't easily fix traffic volume. But the strategy that I suggest eliminates hard stops without reducing cars per minute. And therefore causes the jams to go away faster.